Burns heal faster with wound-covering technique

ANN FOSTER, The Patriot-NewsLori Zimmerman of Upper Allen Twp. suffered severe burns earlier this year when she tripped with a pot of hot chicken noodle soup in her hands.Lori Zimmerman may never be able to look at chicken noodle soup again without remembering.

In February, as she was carrying a huge pot of chicken noodle soup across a church kitchen, she tripped, splashing the hot soup over her face, neck, chest and arm.

“I went down on my knees, still holding onto the pot, and so all the soup splashed right up on me,” said the 42-year-old Upper Allen Twp. resident. “I felt like my face was melting off. I’ve never experienced anything so painful. I can’t even explain it.”

Cindy Raboci, a friend, was also preparing soup for youths who had just finished a 30-hour fast to raise money for charity. She immediately pulled off Zimmerman’s scalding-hot shirt. A registered nurse, Raboci knew to apply cool compresses immediately.

“I’d never seen such a burn,” Raboci said. “Lori’s face was so reddened and the right side of her forehead was peeling only a few minutes after the accident.”

“I was more worried about the 150 kids about to show up for supper and I had no shirt on,” said Zimmerman, laughing now as she recalls that fleeting thought. “I asked Cindy if she thought I should see a doctor, and she said, ‘I think we should call 911.’ So I knew it was bad.”

Zimmerman preferred a friend drive her to Holy Spirit Hospital’s emergency room in Camp Hill, as she continued to hold cool compresses on her face.

At the hospital, Zimmerman was immediately put on morphine for extreme pain. She had second-degree burns on her forehead, neck and chest and a near-third degree burn on her left arm. Even her ears, lips and eyelids were burned — thankfully, she had closed her eyes and had no eye damage. In all, 10 percent of her body surface area was burned.

The E.R. doctor recommended she go to the Regional Burn Center at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, one of seven burn centers in Pennsylvania that cares for about 400 patients annually. The center provides a temperature-controlled and ventilated environment specially designed to prevent infection, control pain and promote wound healing.

“They were amazing,” said Zimmerman, who was most worried about scarring to her face, which was avoided.

“Treatment depends upon the degree of burn, which is based on the temperature and the time of exposure,” said Dr. Sigrid Blome-Eberwein, a reconstructive surgeon at the Burn Center. “With a second-degree burn, there are elements within the skin that can heal the wound.”

For that to happen, however, Zimmerman had to undergo a surgical scraping called dermabrasion to remove the dead skin cells before biobrane, a substance made of collagen and silicon that acts as a temporary wound cover, could be applied.

“As soon as I woke up from surgery and found myself all bandaged up with a collar on and oxygen and a blood pressure pump, that was the moment that I realized this was a lot more than I thought,” said Zimmerman, whose face was covered in a temporary gauze that she joked gave her the appearance of a bank robber.

The biobrane acts as a barrier between nerve endings and the air, so the patient has less pain, more protection against infection and a faster recovery, Blome-Eberwein said. As the wound heals from within, the biobrane peels off, she said.

The Regional Burn Center at Lehigh Valley is among just 40 percent of burn centers nationally that use biobrane, Blome-Eberwein said. “The standard treatment in the U.S. is still antibiotic or enzymatic debridement creams and changing dressings at least once a day,” she said. It’s more expensive for a burn center to do the biobrane procedure since insurance reimbursement is the same as for standard treatment, she said, but the benefit to the patient is considerable.

“Lori is the perfect success story. She healed phenomenally,” said Patrick Pagella, a nurse practitioner at the Regional Burn Center who cared for Zimmerman. “It used to be that a patient would spend one day in the hospital for every percent of burn. For Lori, that would’ve been 10 days, yet she went home in four days.”

All the right things were done when the burn happened — removing the soup-drenched shirt and applying cool, not cold compresses — and Zimmerman attended to follow-up care at home, plus she had a positive attitude, Pagella said. Zimmerman wanted to be positive to reassure her two children, Lydia, 13, and Aaron, 9.

She returned for outpatient visits at the Burn Recovery Center as she healed. It took two weeks for the biobrane to peel off, she said.

Back home, word had spread about the severity of Zimmerman’s burns to the three churches whose youth groups were gathered at Dillsburg Brethren in Christ Church for the 30-Hour Famine. Word went out at Messiah College, where Zimmerman works as an administrative assistant, and at Messiah Village, where her husband, Tim, works.

“I figured I had about 5,000 people praying for me between all the churches and people at the college and Messiah Village,” said Zimmerman, who received several hundred cards in the mail, many from people she didn’t even know. “To them, I just want to say thank you and let you know that prayer works.”

Within three weeks, Zimmerman was back working part time. She still tires easily and must wear sunscreen at all times and can’t be out in the sun for a year, she said.

She might have a scar on her arm and chest, where she was more severely burned, but, she said with a smile, “That’s OK because I’m not really into low-cut shirts. To be able to do anything except play volleyball and go out in the sun, I think it’s a miracle.”